


The Shape of a Life

by literati42



Category: Wonder Woman (Movies - Jenkins)
Genre: Bisexuality, Magic Realism, Multi, Whimsical, Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) Spoilers, minor character exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28367313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literati42/pseuds/literati42
Summary: Spoilers for Wonder Woman 84A brief exploration of the handsome engineer whose life was briefly taken over by our characters
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	The Shape of a Life

**Author's Note:**

> I love Kristoffer Polaha. I also love becoming obsessed with minor characters we know almost nothing about. This is for @BentheKahn on twitter, who shares my love of becoming fixated on minor details and also deciding characters are queer based on nothing but their sweaters.

Luke woke to the sight of an unusually clean apartment and the vague scent of someone else on his pillow. He inhaled deeply, trying to place the smell. Was it Marcus? No, Marcus always smelled of aftershave and oil paint. This was the scent of ocean air and far away places and more things he had no name for. All at once, Luke knew he would remember this scent for the rest of his life.

Luke stretched slowly and let his gaze navigate around his apartment. It was clean, as clean as it was the day he moved in. He hardly recognized the place. It was not that Luke kept things dirty, it was just that his mind functioned best when it was scattered around. Order did not work for his ADHD and trying to force it to was just ignoring the call of his neurodivergent brain. His first step would be to start spreading his books and engineering drafts across every surface again.

He looked at his cellphone and realized that along with the small differences, it was now Christmas. Days gone from his life without even the hint that they happened. Luke realized he should feel afraid, this was the kind of thing that made people afraid—the realization that time was missing and inexplicable changes had happened around you—but the fear did not come. He felt only the vague sensation of having lived a few days in someone else’s dream.

Luke rose from the bed, feeling the ache of muscles that were not used to being exerted in a specific way—had he been running? Luke hated running ever since elementary PE. He made his way around the apartment, tracing his finger across surfaces that were the same, but held something different about them. He found his closet door open and looked at it. Nothing seemed missing, but there was one outfit now hanging on the back of the door—a sweater and scarf combo he loved, but never wore. Every time he put it on, people said he looked like a pirate. For some reason they acted like that was not a compliment. Luke smiled at the clothes, holding them up.

He decided all at once a new principle to live by: when fairies take over your life, make you lose time, fill your house with lovely earthy scents and set out an outfit for you, you damn what other people say and put that outfit on.

Luke, dressed now as a pirate or maybe a fairy prince, headed outside into the shining light of Christmas day. The market was in full swing, with people talking and laughing. Everything felt a bit sharper, every sight and scent and sound a bit stronger. Luke walked through the stalls, letting it all wash over him. Then the scent hit him, the scent from his pillow, and he stopped. Luke turned to see the most beautiful woman he had ever seen looking back at him with a soft smile.

They traded words, soft and warm. She complimented the outfit he knew she chose for him, and then she was gone. Luke half expected to see her vanish, but she made her way down the street as any person would. Then he turned away and stared into the sunlight.

Growing up, Luke’s grandmother filled his mind with fairytales. She was an eccentric woman, who drank too much and explained too little. He felt connected to her by the stories they shared. These were not the pleasant fairytales Disney put on screen. She told him the real ones, full of changelings and children stolen by fairies. He did not believe the stories, not even as a child, but his grandmother did. Missing time and strange women that smelled like meadows were exactly the kind of thing that graced her stories.

Luke reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, focusing on the missed calls and texts, many of them from Marcus. Luke knew with perfect clarity that he could call Marcus right then and smooth everything over. He could make up a story about sickness, take him out to dinner to apologize for worrying him. With little effort, he could slip back into their life together. He could see the shape of it perfectly. Luke would go on being with Marcus and one day they would get married probably, maybe adopt a kid or two. Marcus would keep teaching art classes and Luke would keep working at the engineering firm. They would go to book club and trivia nights, drive out of the city to hike, have friends for dinner and drinks. Theirs was the kind of love that walks gently into old age, hand in hand. It was a good life, the kind of life that leads to happiness, if not the kind that inspires ballads. It was the life he had built with his hands and his heart, and Luke would have happily lived it without an ounce of regret.

Would have until he lost time and gained a scent and a sense that belonged to someone else.

Now his body hurt with unfamiliar aches from adventures he did not remember having and the ghost of laughter he did not remember feeling traced across his lips. Luke knew he had never known joy as deep as the kind that lived in him during those missing days.

He went back to his apartment, packing nearly nothing he collected over the decades of his life. He took only the outfit on his back, the money he had on hand, and a notebook with nothing written in it. Luke walked to the train station, no specific destination in mind. He would call Marcus from the road, apologize even as he knew he would never be able to explain. Luke turned his back on his old life.

Luke knew three things with absolute assurance: there were more things in the world than he previously believed, he was capable of more adventure and more happiness than he thought, and he would never be happy with normal again.

He could not see the shape of the life he was choosing—the life that chose him—as clearly as the one he was leaving, but he knew it started with travel. He would keep moving, keep looking. He would find a great love, or a few, the kind poems were written about. Luke would spend the rest of his life making the world offer up its secrets and never once look back.


End file.
